Raspberry Pi Server - Other Alternatives.

I was thinking of the XU4,

The XU4 is probably a good choice. It has USB3 ports and gig ethernet which will serve you well. I have quite a bit of experience with the C1, but I've had my eye on the XU4 since its release.

Just haven't had much time lately. Good luck.

Mike

I would recommend the Cubieboard 2. I think it offers one of the best price to performance ratios out there for single-board computers. Its main advantages are that it offers nand flash, which is faster than storing the OS on a SD card and saves you the cost of the card, and it has a sata connector so you can get really some really fast read/write speeds and cheaper storage by attaching an SSD or HDD. I've been running a webserver/mediaserver/seedbox on mine for about a year now and I am very satisfied with its performance and stability.   

Yes the XU4 would make a good little server. As Mike says the USB3 and GigE makes for quite a nice package.

You can even use a USB3- Gig E adaptor and have  quite a nice firewall!

The point to note here that for a simple household server even a Odroid C1 is really overkill for many things..Vast power isn't needed to serve up the media only to play it and only then if you have full 1080p or lots of other suff going on!

That's a fact, John. But it's hard to resist 8 cores and 2GB of RAM for the low price of the XU4

Mike

Yep toys are good .. really we need to know volumes and other loads to have a more serious chance of specifying the SBC any closer

I have a Pi B and Pi2 B.  The Pi B ran into performance issues with Owncloud but the 2 runs it well.  I run Owncloud on the 2 with a dynamic DNS client and web exposed and we have 4 phones, two tablets and 6 computers syncing with it.  The Pi runs my internal server with a 1TB drive.  It holds all our other documents, pictures, music, etc that's not on Owncloud.  It's the older stuff that I don't keep synced.  It's also the backup server for the Owncloud pi2.  The internal shares all its data via samba for the windows clients and NFS for the Linux clients and minidlna allows standalone devices like a blueray player to access the media as well.

The orange Pi, period, beaglebone, or small x86 systems such as miniityx boards are all alternatives but the Pi2 works well.

I have a Pi B and Pi2 B.  The Pi B ran into performance issues with Owncloud but the 2 runs it well.

This is just the point. To make a project is more than acceptable to choose the better performances / prices hardware; but if the project should really work for a long time, maybe the worth to invest few more $ and buy a more reliable than super-cheap device anyway.

To make a server IMHO it is different, especially when the server should serve This is the reason that in cases like this I wait until there is not the right budget (or I induce a client) and make the better choice respect the absolute cheaper.

Enrico

On the other hand, for someone gaining experience, first getting the cheapest option is a good way to learn "what is needed".

Example: I had never owned a tablet. What use would I have for one??? Got one of the cheapest, found out what the thing is useful for, and that I need a bit more performance. You can argue that maybe I should have gotten the more performant one immediately. But that's not true: I didn't know what "extra performance" I needed. Better screen resolution? More RAM? More storage? Back then I didn't know, now I do.

Similar case here. Getting the cheapest option first will allow you to learn where that option is lacking **in your case**. Of course if from the outset you can predict it won't satisfy the intended use-case, then it's no use. But if the use-case is vague, unpredictable or may expand in the future, then "maybe this will suffice" and getting the cheapest option is a good way to gain experience in figuring out what you need in the end.

Almost correct Wolff, but first of all this is not an "unpredictable case" as the user explicitly asked suggestions on making a server.

IMHO there are some braking lines where you can't go down in every case. Especially for newbies and there is a reason, supposing that the newbie is not lazying trying just for fun and just because he has nothing better to do (no good films, no friends to go with to the pub, bored of bowling ); when a guy, a very young guy max 6-7 years ask to his parents to play guitar the most probable thing they do if decide to buy a guitar to him is to find a crap just-few-more-than-a-toy guitar. He start playing, study and discover that guitar has a so bad sound that it's no worth. But is the guitar playing bad also when the kid has a sufficient knowledge to play something well. The same is the tablet you never owned. sure it is not the worth you buy a super device investing 5-600$ but if you just try with a Android 2.3 25$ tablets it is very probable that you abandon because you are so far from what a tablet toady is that you continue without any idea.

There is also another aspect, involving the budget. Suppose that you decide to make a server and buy a 177$ Gizmo2 or 79$ SBC like the last XU4. Then you add .... 40$ for a fast 500 Mb HDD USB3. You have spent an amount between 200 and 250$. You have a server, that is what you want, reliable and with good performances. Then you come happy and buy a second HDD and invest another 40$. You have again a server, based on a good SBC and better. And so on.

Instead it is not rare that trying with several low cost devices, adding components, making tests with a platform not useful to reach the goal the expenses count at the end of the experiments result higher than what expected.

Enrico